Peter Otten wrote:
>Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:
>>> Now that the '-*- coding: <charset> -*-' feature has arrived,
>> I'd like to see an addition:
>>>> # -*- str7bit:True -*-
>>>> After the source file has been converted to Unicode, cause a parse
>> error if a non-u'' string contains a non-7bit source character.
>> Could
>> # -*- coding: ascii -*-
>> be sufficient?
No. It would be used together with coding: <non-ascii charset>. The
point is to ensure that all non-ASCII strings are u'' strings instead
of plain strings.
> Why would you reintroduce ambiguity with your s-prefixed
> strings?
For programs that work with non-Unicode output devices or files and
know which character set they use. Which is quite a lot of programs.
> The long-term goal would be unicode throughout, IMHO.
Whose long-term goal for what? For things like Internet communication,
fine. But there are lot of less 'global' applications where other
character encodings make more sense.
In any case, a language's both short-term and long-term goals should be
to support current programming, not programming like it 'should be done'
some day in the future.
--
Hallvard